Swiss refrendum on Nov. 30th regarding her GOLD reserves policy is the CATALYST for next leg up or down. Most traders think that approval of new reserve policy is a low probability event. We know what happens when something which is not expected does happen.

mfbreakout 

Can not short at ORL and can not go long at ORH. CL is stuck within OR. Sitting on hands. Looks like next round of fireworks are not in the cards till OPEC is done with their meeting tomorrow.

If one can not go long at ORH area then next step is to see if shorts makes sense. Short 74.20 but turned out to be a 30 ticks scalp after 2 hours of song and dance. Holding a small short position to see if there is some more juice to the down side.

Also short NG. Wide stop loss. Everytime i tried to be cute with stop loss based off some indicator i downloaded from some wizard or had a special one - the one written exclusively for me- THE ONE- i got hosed. I just try to use stop loss where probabilty of getting stopped out is low. That's all one can do.

NOTE: $4 target for NG is not for today. It's the ideal target to hit at some point. We all know we do not get ideal targets or get ideal anything very seldom.

mfbreakout 

If one can not go long at ORH area then next step is to see if shorts makes sense. Short 74.20 but turned out to be a 30 ticks scalp after 2 hours of song and dance. Holding a small short position to see if there is some more juice to the down side. Also short NG. Wide stop loss. Everytime i tried to be cute with stop loss based off some indicator i downloaded from some wizard or had a special one - the one written exclusively for me- THE ONE- i got hosed. I just try to use stop loss where probabilty of getting stopped out is low. That's all one can do. NOTE: $4 target for NG is not for today. It's the ideal target to hit at some point. We all know we do not get ideal targets or get ideal anything very seldom.

I have been looking for shorts since yesterday. Shorted small position yesterday and added to short this morning. But after one hour scratched the trade as NG was stuck in a tight range.

Reshorted again this after noon around the same area where i was short from this morning and after usual back and forth- NG drops 1%. Out 4.34 area with small position left from the short side.

2 of the biggest upcoming trading set ups will be in CL and GC. CL on OPEC news and GC on Swiss government gold reserve policy. Look forward to trading CL and GC in coming days.

It was just matter of time. I was surprised when 73 did not break during NY session. Cover some around 72.80 on shorts from 73.70 area.

Metals complex getting hit hard. Short PL, GC and SI. 2.29% down move in Silver is massive.

" GC, SI scratch and flat". Was short GC, SI during NY session this morning and had to scratch the trades as they were just stuck in a tight range.

mfbreakout 

It was just matter of time. I was surprised when 73 did not break during NY session. Cover some around 72.80 on shorts from 73.70 area.

reshort during Euro session as selling continues. Every time i short it feels like Crude will rip 200 ticks on my face but she does the opposite and drops 200 ticks. The fear of rip up is out of pending news but the price action is down and down.

When the rip back up comes, it will be obvious to everyone. We will not have to guess.

Closing of the Journal:

Time has come to close my 2nd journal. First journal lasted much longer and continued under 2 different names till last year.
It started out with a title " Trading Crude Oil without indicators". In this journal i traded Crude Oil every day for more than 2 years. I focused on 30 ticks target with 10-15 ticks stop loss. After a year or so, i changed the name of the journal to " Trading futures with context" after i realized that context is most important indicator in trading. I was still focused mainly on day trading crude.

During the course of my first journal i met some traders at NexusFi (formerly BMT) and from other forums- who made me started thinking about trading other instruements besides Crude Oil with wide stop loss to trade with the trend. I had been thinking about this for some time as i started realizing that my Mikey Mouse trading approach will not work over the course of my trading career. It's not that my first approach was not profitable. It was just damn too HARD to compete against algos day in and day out. The moment i realized that i was trying to compete within Algos arena, i gave up my so called Mikey Mouse trades. It was not an easy transition but once it got underway there was no looking back. Now instead of jamming trades with CL every day with 2 steps forward and one step back dance, i look for trades within 4-6 trading instruements every day. I have not even started in Forex universe yet. If there is one area where it definetly pays to hold trades it is forex universe.

I will start a SWING trading journal as i get my set ups line up. Plus i will try to outline as to how macro driven events as a catalyst are helpful to use as a timing tool. Mark Douglas quote sums up holy grail of trading for me "THIS IS WHAT I COULD BE IF I HAD A TOTALLY CARE FREE STATE OF MIND DURING TRADING". How a trader achieves totally care free state of mind is an area where all the time and energies should be used.

I want to thank BigMike for providing a professional platform to share/learn. Thanks to all the traders who have followed my journal and made me a better trader.

Good Luck.

Very inspiring post. Thank you for sharing.

I am an ES Trader and I enjoy reading and researching successful traders in the same industry.

mfbreakout 

I will post articles, thoughts, notes, charts, pictures from other traders, coaches whom i respect and have myself tested whatever idea, trading set up etc. i learned from these wonderful members of trading community. I will encourage other members of NexusFi (formerly BMT) community to post they feel like worth sharing. To kick off- here is one from Brett Steenbarger " A Visit with World Class Trader". I follow Brett Steenbarger. He has coached or observed 100's of traders at very high quality prop. firms. Follwoing write up from him shows many things. One thing which stands out that in a professional enviornment - making 20% a year return is EXCELLENT. Traders trying to make a living while trading full time on 30K, 50Ketc, paying retail comission , having restrictions like overall day wininng of 55% or more, profit target of $9000 ( on 150k funded account) , max draw down of $4500, 10 day duration etc. have no chance. As usual there are ALWAYS EXCEPTIONS. This does not mean TST program does not have merits for traders to check what's it's like before juming into trading full time. Traders doining combine 5 times, 7 times and on and on- have no clue. It will make more sense if they do what Marc Greenspoon does everyday. With technology available now, it's much easier and cheaper to record ones trading day Vs keep throwing money at TST. I have to admitt TST guys are good traders- they have set up a system where they have all the upside and ZERO downside. Now that's an EXCELLENT trade. " Marc Greenspoon: A Visit With A World-Class Trader" Brett posted this in his blog in 2007. In past posts, I have tried to describe the qualities that I have observed among very successful traders. I've also attempted to outline specific steps that traders can take to make themselves more successful. In this post, let's make the discussion more concrete by taking you inside one of my visits with a trader I consider to be among the best in the world. The name Marc Greenspoon won't be familiar to you unless you've read my book Enhancing Trader Performance. He doesn't speak at conference events or advertise himself as a guru. What he does do is trade every day of the week, average between 50 and 100 trades per day in the equity indexes, and make millions of dollars a year. Not just one year or two years, but year after year. He doesn't trade with a mechanical system, and he doesn't trade with quantitative research. Nor does he manage a portfolio. He trades with his mouse and his computer, accounting for several percent of the day's total volume all by himself. I'm grateful to Marc for giving me permission to write this about him, because it illustrates the sheer level of skill needed to be a great trader. Imagine the commissions of trading so frequently, even given the lower commissions available to a trader at a firm that is an exchange member. Imagine how the slippage adds up over the course of, say, 80 trades in a day. Now realize that Marc's profits are after the costs of paying for his overhead at Kingstree Trading, his trading firm, after all the slippage, and after all the commissions. He would be a fine trader simply by trading that often and breaking even at the end of a year! To make millions of dollars a year, year after year, trading that frequently makes it transparently clear that markets are not random. Marc called me on Friday and asked, "What are you doing today?" He wanted to set up a meeting. Friday didn't work, but Margie and I had plans to be in Chicago on Saturday, I told him; we could meet then while markets were closed. Sure enough, Marc was up early Saturday morning to greet us. What did he want to meet about? He wanted to review his first quarter performance and set goals and take specific steps to improve during the second quarter. Not that his first quarter was bad. He made a significant amount of money, certainly in keeping with his past earnings. But he knows he can do better. That's one of Marc's defining features. He's not just an expert trader; he's a continually improving trader. Marc studies himself as diligently as he studies markets. His daily journals, religiously kept, go back years in notebooks that are always at his side. Sometimes he illustrates a point for me by going back to an entry in last year's notebook. He knows the entries--and the markets--that well that he can jump back months and find exactly what he's looking for. Similarly, Marc keeps a large TV monitor and recording device in his office. He records his trading day by capturing everything on his trading screen, and then he archives each day for reference. The screen shows how the market was trading at the time, where he placed his orders, and where he entered and exited trades. At times Marc will get excited and go back to one of the recordings to show me a specific moment in a specific day's trading. He knows the market so well--and his own trading--that he selects the right day and fast forwards to the right spot in the tape. Quite simply, he's reviewed so many more of his performances than other traders that he's learned more than others. He is a one-man study in implicit learning. And it's all driven by his desire to improve. Also by his side are small dictation devices. Marc records his thoughts about his trading and then plays the tapes for review. Many of the tapes focus on what he needs to do to make himself better. He never trades better than when he is thoroughly disgusted with his own performance. Listening to his first tape, my first thought goes to Coach Bob Knight--another professional who hates losing and is driven to win. Indeed, there is similarity between Marc and Coach Knight. Both are aggressive competitors who wear their emotions on their sleeves. Both are generous to a fault and inspire both admiration and loyalty. And, yes, both can push the envelope too far in frustration and sheer determination. If non-emotionality were a necessary ingredient of trading success, Marc would have gone belly up long ago. But Marc succeeds for two other reasons: 1) He knows that winning is guaranteed to no one. Look at it this way: let's conservatively say Marc trades 60 times per day with an average of 400 contracts per trade. That's 24,000 contracts per day. It's also about 6,000,000 contracts per year. Do the math: if he makes several million dollars in a year, his edge is far less than a single tick of profit per contract per trade. That razor thin edge, replicated many times, is what makes him a success. It is like the razor thin edge of a NASCAR champion, battling with his pit crew for every fraction of a second. All it takes is a small flip to turn that small positive expectancy into a small negative one and put a trader like Marc into severe drawdown. Marc knows that. That's why he calls me. That's why he keeps recordings and journals. He works as hard on himself as on his trading. Indeed, for Marc, those are one and the same. 2) He has the support of a superior organization. To use one of Marc's phrases, he has "balls" when he trades. But that is, in part, because he has a boss who has the brass ones. Chuck McElveen, also featured in my book, makes it a point to develop large, successful traders. If you don't have a goal of making a very solid six or seven figures a year, Kingstree isn't interested in you. (Of course, if you don't have a track record of success with smaller size, Kingstree isn't going to enable you to trade thousand lots in the ES contract. Indeed, you wouldn't even get hired.) But once a trader is successful at one level, Chuck encourages a raising of size. A trader like Marc can take risks because Chuck can take risks. As a firm owner, he understands that you only learn to take risks by taking risks. You only learn to trade large by growing your size. Marc is living proof that you don't need a huge edge to be successful, but certain factors are necessary for success. You do need to have an edge; you need the consistency to replicate that edge; you need the drive to continually adapt to changing market conditions; and you need enough capital. I have never met a successful trader who makes money by doubling his or her money every year. The successful traders start with meaningful capital and earn a respectable, but reasonable return upon it. Their success is measured in their consistency, not in their ability to make occasional big scores. The small trader who tries to make millions is forced to take undue risk by trading imprudent size. When the inevitable strings of losing trades occur--as they do for the greats--the account cannot weather such drawdowns. If you have the drive of a Marc Greenspoon to trade tick by tick every day, review markets in video, keep journals and audio recordings, and sustain a learning curve, just focus on sustaining profitability. Don't try to develop a mad edge. Instead, sustain the edge you have and then seek out those organizations that will bankroll your success. Marc is a constant reminder for me of what can be accomplished with determination and skill. For that I am both grateful and proud.

Its been a pleasure reading your insight everyday. Thank you.
Look forward to more.